


Take these broken wings

by Monochrome_chameleon



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Not Really Character Death, Unrequited Love, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-31 00:25:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6448045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monochrome_chameleon/pseuds/Monochrome_chameleon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee Adama wouldn't say he had a guilt complex as such. But then Lee Adama is very good at ignoring what's right in front of him</p>
<p>Or the one where Lee still dreams about Zak every night, wakes up a complete mess, and questions his life choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take these broken wings

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little idea I've been playing with for a while, mostly because Lee Adama does vulnerable so damn well, and because Lee and Kara will always be endgame for me...
> 
> None of the characters belong to me etc etc  
> Title comes from 'Blackbird' by the Beatles.
> 
> This is my first fic, like ever, so please be nice XD

The dream started, as they tended to do, with Zak and a Viper. It started with his brother's wobbly, nervous smile, his father's proud, beaming face, and his own terrible sense of foreboding. Lee watched the hatch swing down over his brother's craft so that Zak was barely visible inside of it- just a tense mouth inside a standard-issue crash helmet- and tried to yell out a warning. Of what, even he wasn't quite sure. To who, he was even less certain. And that was when Lee Adama realised. 

He. Could. Not. Move.

That was new. He'd had multiple variations of this dream in the past, replayed his brother's craft erupting into a ball of flame over and over again, each time waking shaky and sweating, gasping his brother's name. Part of him had come to relish the pain. The guilty part of him that liked to be reminded that he could have done more to save Zak. And the part of him that was just grateful he could still remember his brother's face. Since the attack especially, the dreams served as a reminder that he was human, the unrelenting guilt that he clung to a reminder that he was not a robot. But he'd always been able to act in the dreams, always been able to scream to his brother, to yell at his father, to weep for his loss. Free to express all the rage and fear that he reigned in so tightly during the day. Sometimes he could even shout at Kara and see the guilt that was inside of him reflected back in her eyes.

A wave of helplessness washed over him. Zak's Viper rocketed down the fire track and disappeared, and then Lee was in his own Viper flying along next to his brother- but the Mark VII that he'd flown back in Caprica, not the Mark II that he flew now- and this was all new. New and terrifying. His brother's voice crackled across the comms system "Look Lee, look what I can do" and out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of Zak's smile, a real smile, confident and happy, before the Viper lurched off to the left and Lee's heart lurched in his chest. He watched in dismay as his brother's craft shot off into the distance in a series of complex flips and twists, his own hands uselessly immobile on the Viper's controls. Anxiety bubbled up in his stomach and he struggled to draw enough breath into his lungs. New, in his experience, was dangerous. And his brother had never been this good a pilot.  
The comms system crackled again as his brother's craft flipped round to face him in the distance and he could hear laughter through his headset and the Viper opposite him shot forwards. It sounded manic. Wild. Not like Zak. The Viper sped towards him, picking up speed as it got closer. Desperately, Lee tried to move his hands on the controls, to shout at his brother to stop, but he couldn't move a muscle. He couldn't even sob as the approaching Viper filled up his line of sight. Couldn't close his eyes or brace for impact.

Panic overwhelmed him. Was this how Zak had felt just before he'd died, Lee wondered. Knowing it was the end, but having no way to change the outcome? Was this how the people of Caprica had felt as the world fell apart? Surely it was something that Starbuck had never felt- never would feel- he thought absently, and if he'd been able to laugh he would have then.

Of all the things to think about.

At the last moment, the Viper swerved upwards. Just before it hit him. A split second later, and they'd both have been names engraved in stone, nothing left of their bodies even to bury. The laughter filtered through his headset again and once again he thought of how it sounded nothing like Zak. How none of this was familiar, how none of this was behaviour that seemed anything like his brother. And then a voice rang out through his headset, "Frack Lee, your face" and he could hear the barely suppressed laughter and if he could've he'd have sworn. Loudly.  
The craft dropped down, nose to nose with his, and it was no longer a Viper, it was the Blackbird, and it was no longer Zak. It was Starbuck, a smirk plastered across her face. "Do you not trust me Lee?" she teased. Her hair was a couple of centimetres shorter than he knew it was now, in real life. This was the Kara who had been thrown in the brig for punching the LT. This was the Kara he'd first fallen in love with.  
Her grin began to fade. "Do you not trust me Lee?" It was more urgent this time. A frown furrowed her brow. "Why don't you trust me Lee? Please Lee, why?" Her voice sounded frail this time, broken. To his horror, her face faded out into Zak's face. Not Zak's face as he remembers it but Zak's face charred and blackened and twisted. "Why Lee? Why did you let this happen to me?" The face was shifting between the two of them now, more and more rapidly.

"You know it's your fault Lee." Kara. "You were supposed to protect him."

"How could you let this happen? You were my big brother. You should have known better." Zak.

"It was your fault then, just like everything that's happened since. You should have tried harder." 

He could barely tell the difference between them anymore they were flickering that fast, their voices swirling around him, all his darkest thoughts on the lips of the people he had loved the most. He felt the gorge rising in his throat, his corotid artery pulsing wildly as his heart pounded. Gradually, the face of the pilot opposite him settled back into Kara's face, but white, pale, drawn. He had only ever seen her like this when she had first found out that her fiancé was dead, and dread engulfed him.

He saw her lips moving. "Goodbye Lee." Her voice floated over the intercom. Just before the Blackbird erupted into a ball of flame.

 

Lee wrenched himself out of sleep with a gasp, letting out a sob as he curled up into a ball on the bed. His body was filled with sickening adrenaline. His chest heaved uncontrollably, just as it hadn't been able to do in his dream. He heard Dee roll over, and sleepily ask him what was wrong, and as he squeezed his eyes shut against his tears he saw Starbuck disappear in a burst of flame again, and his stomach lurched violently. "Sick," he managed to gasp out in warning, before he was clambering out of the bed and staggering across the room. Lee retched into the bin that lay by the door, and his head throbbed wretchedly with each heave, and Dee was at his back murmuring soft words into his ear and Dee's hands were rubbing comforting circles into his shoulder as he sobbed and all he could think of was Kara. Kara and the nights that they'd spent together on cold, narrow metal bunks, pressed up against each other more because there wasn't space for more than one person than anything else, and how he'd never been more comfortable anywhere than he had been with his back jammed up against the wall so hard his shoulder went numb, and the warmth of her body tucked firmly next to his.


End file.
